Samsung Seeks Greater ‘Galaxy’ Share of Enterprise

By Tiernan Ray

Samsung Electronics (AAPL) this morning announced it will make enhancements to the wireless security technology it offers for mobile phones and tablets, called “SAFE,” in an effort to make a greater push into enterprise mobile usage.

The announcement came hours before the start of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, and had been speculated about in press reports leading up to the event.

Tim Wagner, VP and GM for enterprise sales with Samsung’s Samsung Mobile USA, gave a briefing to journalists. Samsung thinks it is facing a “perfect storm” in the mobile industry that may help it get a deeper share of enterprise mobile use with its Galaxy S handsets, Galaxy Note phablets, and Galaxy Tab tablets. As Wagner explained, 85% of companies today have some sort of policy to support the “bring your own device” trend, known as BYOD, and 75% of smartphones sold at retail are running Google‘s (GOOG) Android software, and Samsung sells half those Android handsets.

Hence, the implication being, the company is going to be moving a lot of the units that people buy for themselves that they want to bring onto their employers’ networks.

You might have seen one of six ads run by Samsung during the Oscars last night, if you happened to watch the broadcast, touting SAFE. I’m not sure why that was an ideal venue to talk up smartphone safety, but, well, there you have it.

Wagner said a new set of capabilities called “Knox” would add several features that enterprise and government want, including expanding the number of “policies” companies can download to employee devices. The maximum number of policies will be expanded from a current maximum for Android of 80 to a maximum of 338. Wagner took a veiled swipe at Apple (AAPL), declaring that this new threshold for enterprise policies would be more than the maximum of 220 policies offered by Samsung’s “main smartphone competitor.”

Other new capabilities for SAFE include “on-device encryption with AES 256-bit encryption,” encrypting both the handset and any SD card that happens to be inserted into the device; a “Security-Enhanced” version of Android, written in collaboration with the NSA, similar to the “SE Linux” operating system, which boots a handset or tablet securely; a “trust zone” that protects the Android OS kernel once the device is booted; and a “container” that would keep enterprise data on a personal device protected from being any user access from the rest of the device, so that you can’t, for example, email your corporate spreadsheet via your personal email.

If an employee leaves a job, Knox allows IT to wipe just the corporate part of the device, leaving alone one’s personal stuff.

Knox also brings the following government and defense standards to devices, particular to the U.S.:

American Airlines: Started in summer of 2011 — made custom software for them — in process of rolling out 16,800 Note Is as smartphones — for passenger management — was supposed to be ipad originally — first time there will not be a printed manifest ; first thing used with wifi on flight

Wagner added that “One of the largest beverage vendors in the world is moving to our device, replacing their 30,000 legacy devices,” and is rolling out BYOD with SAFE.

Wagner was asked whether existing Samsung products will be able to be upgraded to Knox. He said yes, although support will vary. Some capabilities have to be built into the device before it ships and cannot be added to something merely through a software update.

Wagner said the time frame for the roll out of Knox is Q2, and that more information will be provided toward the end of this quarter.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.